RobbieTheWagner 
Charles William Carpenter III Intro: [00:00:00] Welcome to Syntax. Welcome to a brand new episode of the Front End Happy Hour podcast. Welcome to this week’s JS Party. Live from Ship Shape Studios, this is Whiskey Web and Whatnot. With your hosts, Robbie the Wagner, and me, Charles William Carpenter III. That’s right Charles. We drink whiskey and talk about web development.
I mean, it’s all in the name. It’s not that deep. This is Whiskey Web and Whatnot. Do not adjust your set.
Promo: Hey everyone. We want to invite you to join us at All Things Open. All Things Open is the largest open source tech web conference on the US East Coast. It’s hosted annually in the heart of Research Triangle Park in downtown Raleigh, North Carolina. Target audiences include developers, engineers. Decision makers and open source [00:01:00] community members and anyone else involved with open source software. 4,000 to 5,000 people from all over the world are expected in October. We’re gonna be there. More information can be found online at 2024.allthingsopen.org. I really hope I don’t have to spell that for you.
Robbie Wagner: What’s up everybody? As you just heard, this is Whiskey Webb and whatnot. Your favorite podcast about the Byzantine Empire and your hosts, Ravi the Wagner, and Charles William Carpenter III.
Chuck Carpenter: You’re so, you’re so unsure about that as time goes by. But it is interesting because the fun banter that we have around that kind of should be going away because they just heard that already.
Robbie Wagner: I know. I just to drop random shit in the beginning though.
Chuck Carpenter: Yeah, the Byzantine Empire. Yeah. Today’s episode is, it’s fucking Friday.
Robbie Wagner: That’s true.
Chuck Carpenter: That’s what, that’s what it’s said. Maybe we need a new segment called It’s [00:02:00] Fucking Friday. It’s, you know, there’s something there. I don’t know.
Robbie Wagner: Yeah. The day of week is of irrelevant these days though, like, you know, it’s, I’m busy all the time, regardless of whether it’s quote unquote work or not, or
Chuck Carpenter: Right.
Robbie Wagner: So. There’s no reprieve.
Chuck Carpenter: Yeah. Yeah. We had a big storm last night, the monsoons here, and it was substantial rain. Okay. And that’s fine, but we have no drainage and you know, so that’s kind of a problem. And there was a a lot of wind that wind did, gave me some weekend chores. Let’s just say that have some, like the shade sails set up, broke the ropes on a couple of those.
They have some larger bushes that are now like. Leaning like the Tower of Pisa that I need to figure out okay, there’s a 10 foot bush pushed sideways at like, probably like 45 degrees over or something. It’s like pretty substantial. So it’s how do you get this back? I don’t know.
Robbie Wagner: You can push stuff back, [00:03:00] but it’ll sometimes not hold when you push it back. Like we had tree do that and it was like, oh, you could just set it back up and like tamp it back down. It just died and then blew over the other direction. Anyway, so
Chuck Carpenter: So there you go. You’ve really, uh, upped my spirits about this chore. Yeah, I think like, I’m just gonna take like some big ladder and Sarah and I will just like, try and use that to press it back to the wall and,
Robbie Wagner: yeah, leverage is your friend.
Chuck Carpenter: Leverage is our friend, and so we’re gonna see it’s that, or we just get, you know, what caused this was a bunch of wind, and so what if we just get a really big fan no, you know,
Robbie Wagner: You get all your neighbors out there and go,
Chuck Carpenter: yes. Tight with the neighbors. So that’ll help. All right. Well on that positive note, everyone, let’s talk about today’s whiskey and, and sorry in advance.
Robbie Wagner: hands are actually, uh, large.
Chuck Carpenter: It makes, makes, look at this. This is a normal sized bottle. I just have [00:04:00] big hands.
Robbie Wagner: Yes.
Chuck Carpenter: Yeah. Today’s we’re having the Kings County Distillery.
It is a spiced flavored whiskey. It is only 80 proof, 40% alcohol buy volume. This is New York City’s oldest whiskey distillery, which you gotta kind of wonder, it’s in Brooklyn. Like, what is that? Like 20 years? I mean, I don’t know. I, I can’t imagine there’s any like long operating distilleries from a hundred years
Robbie Wagner: Hmm. I don’t know.
Chuck Carpenter: Yeah. Yeah. No Nashville, no age statement, but it is flavored. So today we’ll be talking about this one in the of flavored whiskeys. Ooh. Yeah. Yeah. Definitely has like, it smells like, like a Christmas wreath, a
Robbie Wagner: Yeah. Yeah. I was gonna say it’s like a spice cider, but like, not necessarily in a good way. It smells
Chuck Carpenter: spice cider candle.
Robbie Wagner: yeah, like maybe Juniper. I.
Chuck Carpenter: or whatever. Yeah, a little.
Robbie Wagner: I don’t. Yeah, I don’t know if I’m gonna love it.
Chuck Carpenter: You’re setting yourself up for success here. [00:05:00] Lots more smells, but that’s very much like if you were to get like a Christmas reef or spice cider candle. That’s what it
Robbie Wagner: Yeah. Like if you go to cut down a Christmas tree and some sap on your hand and then you licked it later, probably what this is gonna taste like.
Chuck Carpenter: So the, the side note there is that you’ve just revealed that you do, you tried to lick the SAP off?
Robbie Wagner: No, no, I’m just, I’m just speculating.
Chuck Carpenter: Tinge. More cinnamon? Yeah. Like I don’t even know if people,
Robbie Wagner: whoa.
Chuck Carpenter: yeah,
Robbie Wagner: Definitely spice cidery,
Chuck Carpenter: yeah.
Robbie Wagner: some star anise and like oranges.
Chuck Carpenter: Maybe it’s basically everything you would put it. What were those things? It used to be very popular and you get like this bag of like potpourri pop, right? If you had like a winter potpourri and your grandmother, because who else would be still using potpourri? But like you have that, you know, it’s that stuff.
It’s like all dried [00:06:00] out and then you put it in this little bowl thing and then it goes on top of something else that kind of warms it, and then you get that scent throughout the house.
That’s what this tastes like. Like if I was to eat some of that winter spice that’s what this tastes like,
Robbie Wagner: yeah. Also like another old person thing, like getting a. A cinnamon broom or like a thing of pine cones that are like coated in cinnamon or whatever, like all, all of the above is what it
Chuck Carpenter: Yeah, it evokes all of those wintery, which aren’t I, so I’m not saying that, at least for me in a bad way necessarily like these, these aren’t, like that said, it’s hot August day where it’s 101 outside for me, although I’m in a freezing office right now. So, you know, kind of balances out. I think this might make for interesting winter cocktails.
That’s what I’ll say about it. Like if I this in a little eggnog. I could probably fuck with that ‘cause I would bring some interesting like thickness and sweetness to it also.
Robbie Wagner: yeah, I think it’s like all of the flavors are good. [00:07:00] I don’t know if I like fully enjoy it as one flavor, but it’s like. Everything I’m tasting is good, but it is a little more candidly to me, like it doesn’t taste as food like, so just a little, like a tiny bit off putting from that. But like all the flavors are are pleasant.
Chuck Carpenter: All right. Well, I think we’re prepared to rate this the highly technical scale for those listening. For the first time, I’m sorry, you should be upset with whoever suggested this podcast. But anyway, we have a highly technical rating scale from zero to eight to tentacles because you know, a dead octopi may have zero tentacles, hard to say.
And, uh, zero being terrible. Four, middle of the road. Eight. Amazing. Clear the shelves. Robbie and I will be rating this against other flavored whiskeys that we’ve had. We like to categorize, but you can do whatever you like if you go out and try this yourself.
Robbie Wagner: Is it me
Chuck Carpenter: hear your voice next. Yeah, I
Robbie Wagner: Okay.
Chuck Carpenter: go.
There’s enough of me.
Robbie Wagner: I think. Uh, we haven’t really rated a lot of flavored [00:08:00] whiskeys and we should do some more just ‘cause we do a lot of like nice whiskeys. Let’s do some weird
Chuck Carpenter: get some more shit. Off the bottom shelf.
Robbie Wagner: Yeah. So not that this is bottom shelf. I do like it. I think it’s pretty good. Compared to other flavored whiskeys, I don’t enjoy it as much.
‘cause usually with a flavored whiskey I’m kind of wanting it to stand on its own with the flavor and be like super enjoyable. I do agree this would be good in a cocktail or something more wintry. My favorite flavored whiskey was that Banana One, ironically.
Chuck Carpenter: you were gonna say it. knew you were gonna say it. much to my chagrin, I agree with you.
Robbie Wagner: Yes. Everyone that I’ve
Chuck Carpenter: been the best one.
Robbie Wagner: is I’m like, all right, like suspend disbelief here for a second.
Like, this gonna be good. Try it. And they’re like, no, no, no. Like, yeah, try. Oh, it’s actually good. But anyway, one much less good than that, I would say on its own, not mixing a cocktail, it’s kind of middle of the road for me. So I’d say about a four.
Chuck Carpenter: Yeah, I, I have to agree, like I don’t want to completely shit on it ‘cause it’s not bad, but the flavors are very nuanced to a very specific [00:09:00] context and thinking that like, you would have to mix it to make it tasty, to kind of, you know, it just isn’t diverse enough or whatever. It just doesn’t. Satiate enough on its own, but not bad for what it is.
So we’ve got like, so this comes in a few different sizes and this was just their 200 milliliter, like looks like a little pint, like prohibition, I’m sneaking around my whiskey pint, yada, yada, yada. It was like 15, 20 bucks, something like that. Worth trying, worth kind of hanging around for like, you know, special things.
But, uh, a four is fine. I wouldn’t be like, go get it. But if you were like, I’m looking for something different for my eggnog. I would suggest
Robbie Wagner: Yeah. Or a spice cider, like you don’t need to spice your cider because it’s already spice. So just like. Put it in your cider.
Chuck Carpenter: Get a nice fresh cider again. I think sweet is the missing element and fine. Right? Like whatever this mash bill is doesn’t have that. So this has a little bitter and, and all those other flavors that we mentioned. Just a sweet would round it out for me.
Robbie Wagner: [00:10:00] yeah. Agreed.
Chuck Carpenter: Well, okay then no hot takes ‘cause it’s just us.
Robbie Wagner: I mean, I’m sure we have hot takes. I just don’t know what, uh, what they would be right now.
Chuck Carpenter: Well, the answer to every hot take for you is tailwind. For some reason it’s strange. You are like, rails are jingo. You’re like tailwind. know.
Robbie Wagner: I don’t need a backend framework. I write my, uh, APIs exclusively in utility classes, and it just works.
Chuck Carpenter: I can’t wait till you can use server in CSS and make your, you know, SQL queries right From your CSS.
Robbie Wagner: Something, something that could be a potential hot take. That that reminded me of this guy posted something about like, most humans can’t follow a conditional statement, and his like explanation wasn’t good. It was like, if I go to France, where could I get a good baguette? So it’s like the first part is like if I go to France and Mo, he’s like, most people will ignore that and just [00:11:00] assume you’re saying I’m gonna go to France.
So where would you recommend? But it’s like a if then. And I don’t love that example ‘cause I feel like a lot of people would have that problem. But he’s like saying that people can’t follow that. And that means like over half of people that can’t follow like conditional statements like that are, that means those people aren’t turning complete.
And I’m like, what?
Chuck Carpenter: That’s, that’s some weird shit. Like, so there’s this entire area of development for software folks or whatever else where there are weird flexes like that. And I think it’s been bubbling up for various reasons, right? Like when people are talking about. Software complexity and full stack frameworks and stuff of that nature.
But like it’s come up a bunch in the last few days because of the Lex Friedman podcast and Peter Levels being on there and like, oh, I just used jQuery and PHP, and I ship and I push right to production. I don’t know if you’ve seen some of that stuff.
Robbie Wagner: I’ve [00:12:00] seen some of the posts. Yeah.
Chuck Carpenter: Yeah, and people will kind of choose some like, oh, he’s great, or he’s bullshit and Polly cares about his money over like clean, well-crafted software.
And this feels like one of those in the sense of like, I’m doing some geeky tech flex to show you how I could apply these paradigms to everything in in the world or something. I don’t know. It does what it feels like to me.
Robbie Wagner: Yeah. Yeah. I don’t know that I fully follow it, but I guess my roundabout point there was like CSS is going to be fully touring complete before half of humanity, which is hilarious.
Chuck Carpenter: That, that is probably true. Yeah. Or definitely is true. Right? But also if like, somebody brought that up to you at a party, assuming you got invited, which we won’t, but uh, had they, you’d be like, shut up.
Robbie Wagner: Like this fucking nerd,
Chuck Carpenter: You know who you are. You are not fun. That’s what you are. You’re not fun. I hope that feels [00:13:00] good though.
Maybe you should go home and be touring. Complete yourself off. I don’t Alone. ‘cause nobody wants to hear that shit. Anyway. That said, you know, interesting analysis, I guess to a degree we are a web software podcast and I do find some of those like rabbit holes. Interesting. But then I like check myself every once in a while and I’m like, who cares?
You know what this doesn’t do. Pay a fucking mortgage.
Robbie Wagner: yeah, I have reacquainted myself with the 13-year-old who would like find something online and need to fight with everyone about it and have a lot of fun with that. I like. I missed that. Like, so I’m, I’m here for all the drama.
Chuck Carpenter: Do you plan to start to partake deeper in those discussions is what you mean?
Robbie Wagner: I think so I just want to, I feel like I’m not very thoughtful about, I’m just like, try to shit on people for fun, but like, I do wanna have more, uh, [00:14:00] educated, like discussions about that sort, these sort of things. And like, call people out for real reasons instead of just like, you’re dumb. No, you’re dumb.
Like,
Chuck Carpenter: Yeah, no. Yeah. I mean, if you’re gonna engage kind of. Make it something, at least it doesn’t matter, like if your opinion is right per se, but like contradictory opinions do make for some entertaining threads. I have just been in the mode for a little bit because someone online was saying like a modern generations find replying with a meme as like creepy and weird, and I was like, hold my beer.
Robbie Wagner: Yeah. Gen Z can just shut the fuck up because everything, they think everything is weird. Meanwhile, they use no real English in their sentences and like,
Chuck Carpenter: All the, their own vernacular and all of that. I mean, lots of generations
Robbie Wagner: yeah. Like they, they think like we’ve, we’ve gone, gone full circle. If you wear no show socks, those, those are dad socks. Now you gotta have the real tall socks.
I’m [00:15:00] like. I think they just don’t want, like, every generation can’t, like the stuff the last generation liked ‘cause that’s like their parents, that can’t be cool. So it’s like, I get it and I get, but it’s just like, just shut up. Just leave everyone to their own. Like they, they’ve redone all the emojis too.
They’re like, oh yeah, this emoji means this now. So like, if I use it, I look like an asshole to like everyone who understands that. But I’ve been using this emoji for like my whole life, bro. Like, anyway.
Chuck Carpenter: That’s a, it’s an interesting point and it’s really funny for me given like things are coming around the second time and then some for few, so it’s like, oh yeah, I wore those socks in high school. Of course. Yeah. We all did that and push ‘em down and pinch roll and all that bullshit that you’re doing now.
I already done it
Robbie Wagner: Yeah.
Chuck Carpenter: years ago, feels like, and then, you know, I came around to, to these other bits ‘cause. I think I just came to more functional bits. I like no-show socks because it’s a billion degrees here. So why am I [00:16:00] covering up more legs when I’ve worn shorts to explicitly expose more
Robbie Wagner: Yeah, and you don’t have to worry about like anything about the style of the sock ‘cause you don’t see it. So it’s like.
Chuck Carpenter: Right, but it’s a good way of, because there was some years or whatever where you just wore like no socks and your shoes and made them stinky and whatever else. It was like, this is a good middle ground. Like, you know, there’s a hygiene to this and still get to expose. don’t know.
Robbie Wagner: Yeah. I feel like this all, you know, kind of brings me back to everyone loving different frameworks and ways of doing things and like. You got the one camp that like learned React or like, whatever, a decade ago, and they’re like, never gonna change. And then got, you know, the other camp that’s like, Ooh, that came out.
All right, I’ll use that for three years. And then, Ooh, view is out. I’m gonna use that. And then, oh, oh, okay. Feld is out now. And like, you know, people want the new [00:17:00] shiny and they’re always chasing the shiniest thing. And like, I think we’re, we’re doing the same thing, kind of circling back. Everyone’s like, oh God, I’m tired of learning a new framework every three years.
Ooh, PHP still exists. use that.
Chuck Carpenter: Yeah, I heard Laravel is good. I don’t know. true? Let’s, uh, maybe you get a Lambo out of it. No, you don’t. Just the guy who created Laravel, I didn’t even realize they have their own. Special hosting for the framework. So it’s like the
Robbie Wagner: Hmm.
Chuck Carpenter: versal like business model on that high level.
Obviously there’s a whole lot else going on, I’m sure for both sides and I don’t know, I can’t even remember. It’s like Laravel Inferno or Disco Infer. Anyway, I don’t remember what it’s called, but they do have their own hosting thing. And again, this comes out of the Whole Levels discourse. Of, of stuff.
‘cause he makes some comment about like how he doesn’t understand these, these companies making these frameworks and their own hosting [00:18:00] specific for the frameworks and all the money going into that, and yada yada yada, you know? Right. Like he’s just a dude, uh, on his laptop trying to ship his So good for him.
That’s a good way to do it, I think. And there’s, it’s obviously not for everything and everyone, but you know, pointing out. What is, and again, it’s not the end of the world. These are businesses that people invest in and have careers and lives around, and so they’re trying to make money. I get that, but is it for you or not?
I don’t know. You know, that’s the other tech flex though, is like, oh man, my $5 VPS can do the same stuff if you just don’t be a dummy and learn a few things.
Robbie Wagner: Yeah, that’s true. I don’t know. There’s a, a lot different ways to, to do everything and I’m just trying to like, hopefully make enough money for retirement before AI puts us all outta
Chuck Carpenter: Mm. So you’re racing the clock.
Robbie Wagner: yeah. Yeah.
Chuck Carpenter: I mean, there’s humans involved at some level though, right? Like you’re not a [00:19:00] CEO who, like what? Hires a product manager who becomes good at prompting and then you just trust the computer is doing the right thing for you. Like. don’t know. I just feel there’s, there’s a lot more nuance there.
mean, there’s no way that things stay the same. I mean, not that they’ve stayed the same, the last 10 years even, So whatever, like I agree that there’s going to be shifts and changes and whatever else. It might be less people, I don’t know. Or you might have to adapt that. And we’re all managers, we’re all computer managers.
Maybe you’ve gotta like.
Robbie Wagner: Yeah.
Chuck Carpenter: There’s, okay. Just make sure you review the PR before a computer developer pushes shit in. I don’t know. I have no idea what it is, but, and somebody still designs the system some, you know, not
Robbie Wagner: everything’s still changing. So like, you know, as new frameworks come out or like we all decide, or not even just decide like a new HTML element drops and it like [00:20:00] is useful for a bunch of stuff that we were like hacking around forever. AI is gonna be like, oh, the way you do it is you do this hack around way.
And like humans will know, oh no, this has changed. And like, yeah, AI will continue to learn and evolve as we keep. Throwing billions of dollars at it and throwing ourselves into an unavoidable disaster with the, the environment. I don’t know. I, I do think it’s kind of a bubble. It’s not gonna solve everyone’s problems.
It’s gonna change a lot of things, and it will potentially get rid of some industries, you know, like a call center if AI knows the answers to everything theoretically and can just answer you immediately, you don’t have to wait on hold and whatever. Yeah, that’s, that’s fine.
Chuck Carpenter: like, yeah, right? Like who’s to say that customer service isn’t displaced before development? But you also gotta think of it from the access standpoint, which is like, okay, let’s say. The interview you mentioned or whatever is correct, and like if you have access, if you are [00:21:00] Amazon or you have like easy access to Amazon level infrastructure, like the, the Devon thing, that was like a year ago or something like here’s a completely AI software engineer who can afford Devon though, right?
Like not everybody can afford Devon or a version or a replicant of, of Devon. So it doesn’t end up, even if it works. Good enough. And then whatever system that goes into that works, there’s gonna be a whole rollout over decades potentially.
Robbie Wagner: I do wonder what the things actually. Cost. I haven’t looked at all into does OpenAI actually make money off of
Chuck Carpenter: do.
Robbie Wagner: or, yeah. ‘cause I’m assuming like if I do a lot of really complex things and use a lot of your compute up and I pay a flat, what, 20 bucks a month or whatever, like they’re probably not making money that probably just like they’re showing revenue growth, which brings new investors and whatever, but like.
Chuck Carpenter: their thing is interest in signups and also intake to continue to train the [00:22:00] models and all of that like crazy stuff. That’s the asset. The asset isn’t really revenue at this point. The revenue just offsets cost.
Robbie Wagner: So, I don’t know. I don’t know that it’s super sustainable. I think it’s kind of like, you know, we had the Uber for everything for a while and most of those have died off. And like even the Ubers and door dashes of the world are like still like, oh, we’re not making money. How do we do this?
Chuck Carpenter: they’re still struggling yet somehow, like the cost continues to rise. There’s various con conveniences of it that go away. Like, I don’t, I can’t tell you, it must be at least like two in 10 orders from like DoorDash are fucked up. So then you have a whole customer service loop and I’m annoyed, and now I’m not gonna order with you for a couple of weeks.
And the humans aren’t making as much money either, so they’re like, fees go down. The interest from people trying to do the gig economy, like they can’t get by either. Like I feel like there’s a of fallacies across it, so I [00:23:00] don’t know.
Robbie Wagner: yeah. I saw somebody post a thing about like a, a way to make money is to like buy a bunch of old cars and just rent them to DoorDash people. I. Because like either they don’t have a car at all and they’re looking for an easy way to like start door dashing or like they don’t wanna put a bunch of miles on their car.
Whether that makes money or not or is worth the headache or not is, is not for sure. But then it’s like some DoorDash driver broke down all the costs of that and was like, he basically makes like a dollar an hour or something after all expenses, like nothing. ‘cause you know you gotta pay for your gas, which is like pretty much a daily thing if you’re driving all day.
I think he made maybe like three or $4 a mile or something. I don’t, maybe, I don’t know. I don’t remember all the numbers. He basically was down to like after all expenses and like everything, it’s like a dollar an hour, like basically nothing.
Chuck Carpenter: Like you make whatever money and then at some point you gotta put new tires on your credit card or some bullshit that. Like, you know, you get tires that are supposed to go 40,000 [00:24:00] miles and you know, you do that every year and there’s just like constant wear on them. They probably don’t last as long.
It’s like. So the gig economy, I could tell you, you know, the Uber for hotel rooms, Airbnb, short-term rentals, that game sucks. Been in, been in that
Robbie Wagner: it’s good.
Chuck Carpenter: yeah,
Robbie Wagner: Or you mean as a, as an owner, it
Chuck Carpenter: as an owner, as a, I have vacillated back and forth as a whatever, renter, whatever that is.
Robbie Wagner: Yeah, I’ve had good experiences and bad experiences renting from
Chuck Carpenter: sure. Overall, I used to be a big fan of it, especially when traveling abroad because it was a great way to just like.
Get out of the tourist center and like be in normal neighborhood and like experience that, like, which I do value quite a bit. And that was always more important to me than like some of the amenities. But you know, even that, like the fees have gone up and there’s like crazy cleaning fees. then, and on top of that they’re like, make sure you clean it all [00:25:00] yourself and, uh,
Robbie Wagner: yeah. There was one, like we went to South Carolina. We were looking for places. They were all like. Relatively affordable, but there was one that like, I forget the exact numbers. Let’s say this one was like a hundred bucks a night or something, and the other one was like two 50 a night. So you’re like on paper, like the a hundred dollars a night one, probably the one that’s cheaper, right?
But then you go like try to book it and it’s like, oh, there’s like a $500 cleaning fee at the end, and you’re
the fuck. They do that, I guess to like get around the like taxes and fees on a little bit of their money or something and just straight up pocket that money. But there should be some kind of threshold, like there’s no way you’re paying that much for someone to clean that place.
Chuck Carpenter: no. Yeah, there’s no way. I mean, a deep clean of like a three bedroom house wouldn’t cost that much, so. Yeah, that’s a little like you said, I think you figured it out. They’re trying get around some of the, all of that stuff.
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Chuck Carpenter: So we’ve talked about a few different industries that software is involved with.
I wonder is there any industry, ‘cause as some people may not know, we have run an agency together. It’s not dead, it’s just smaller ship shape and worked with all kinds of clients. Is there any client or industry that you think like. You know, all money being the same, that you wouldn’t build an app for.
Robbie Wagner: My initial thought was, no. Like, if you’re paying me enough, I don’t really care. [00:27:00] But I think they’re like, you know, aside from, you know, potential content that people may or may not like around like pornography or drugs or like, things like that, like you may not like love that, but if like the things you’re doing are legal. In whatever capacity. Fine. I think the problem becomes like if you’re promoting like terrorism or like, like you get a call from ISIS and they’re like, yo, here’s a million dollars, but you gotta make us this dope website. We want super base and we want js like,
Chuck Carpenter: Oh geez.
Robbie Wagner: then you’d probably have to be like, God, I wish I could take this million dollars.
But no, like that there is a level where you would have to be like, this is actively harming people or promoting people that harm people. I can’t do that. But in terms of like content that’s like, eh, like whatever, like I don’t care. I’ll do whatever. Like
Chuck Carpenter: Yeah, I mean, I think it’s an assumed he wouldn’t do anything illegal, and I believe like at this point, like [00:28:00] interacting with isis, even if it was an Astros static website, might be illegal. I don’t know. I’m not really
Robbie Wagner: Yeah. I think doing anything for them. Yeah.
Chuck Carpenter: I, I think I would stray from politics completely, in general.
Either party, any of the parties, like all of this stuff. I, I think I would just be like, I don’t know.
Robbie Wagner: If they do have giant piles of money, though.
Chuck Carpenter: just for short periods of time, you know? And then you gotta build rapport with someone else altogether. I don’t think I would really like to do that unless it was like a very cool technical challenge.
Maybe. I don’t know. So there you go. I just said offhand. Yeah, like assuming it’s legal. So that means you can do something for the marijuana industry in many states. I don’t know if Virginia is one of those and yeah. You know, legal porn with adults and whatever. I guess that’s fine. Yeah. I don’t know. It’s funny though ‘cause like what kind of vibes would it give you?
I used to work for National Geographic working [00:29:00] on anything with that content for the most part. Like used to, I just used to think it was so cool and I would kind of geek out on it. So I guess I might, you know, be missing that aspect of it.
Robbie Wagner: Yeah. I mean, I think a pride in your work. Kind of thing where you don’t want to share where you’re working. You might be a little embarrassed about it, but I
Chuck Carpenter: right. Like it’s hard to share or something else? I would, mean, while I’m working on it, I would think about like, what are the challenges here? Oh, I’m dealing with like high resolution images and, and how do you like, provide the best for the user, but also like, don’t fuck the network or I don’t know.
Robbie Wagner: I imagine that like. You know, working for a porn site or something that you don’t necessarily have to sit there and watch porn all day. They probably have like a placeholder video or like
Chuck Carpenter: Well, I was just like, can’t you really just like have test data your development? That just isn’t that like, do I need to see a dick in to get this right? Like if I
Robbie Wagner: I mean, the person probably [00:30:00] does, but like you don’t.
Chuck Carpenter: Right. Take, I’d mix it with a little water just to see if it
Robbie Wagner: Oh, I don’t know do that.
Chuck Carpenter: That’s not better. I wouldn’t do that.
No. I would say avoid, it was partially accidental. This’s, just me making an excuse. I don’t wanna lie to our listener. I forgot. I put some water in there to clear it out. Poured a little more whiskey as we were talking about Dick and
Robbie Wagner: As we do.
Chuck Carpenter: I. Yeah, that’s what we do sometimes, know, and yeah, mix it up. Don’t, don’t suggest.
So there you go. Uh, all right. So, yeah, I think we agree then. At some point, like the nature of the content isn’t quite all that important. For the most part. I think we’re open to just like solving challenges.
Robbie Wagner: Yeah, I think, actually, this might be a weird thing to say and it’s kind of unique to Ember Apps, but like I can build an app for years and never know what kind of content that place I’m working at does because it’s so opinionated. Like I [00:31:00] don’t need to know about. How the business works or what all the specifics are.
You’ve got your Ember data models. You tell me like what fields you’re getting from the back end. I like wire it all up like,
Chuck Carpenter: Mm-Hmm.
Robbie Wagner: you know, can do it without running the app. You just like run tests. They pass good.
Chuck Carpenter: until you read or write, your first is dick pic Boolean. Right. know, it’s
Robbie Wagner: Hotdog or no hot dog?
Chuck Carpenter: Exactly. Yeah. On chat roulette. We see how that worked.
Robbie Wagner: Yeah.
Chuck Carpenter: All right. Do you wanna, you wanna talk about this open source? This, I think you should talk about this this is basically your dream scenario.
Robbie Wagner: so I, I want to have him on to talk more. I asked if he liked whiskey, he said yes. So, we’ll, we’ll have him on to give the full story. But, uh, this guy, Caleb Poeo, he’s like, he does some Laravel stuff and some something else. I don’t, honestly, I don’t know a ton about him. I’ve
Chuck Carpenter: See PHP coming back, coming for you.
Robbie Wagner: But he’s [00:32:00] basically like, he had a post on how he’s making a hundred KA year on GitHub sponsors, and then a follow up post on how he made like a million dollars total so far or something. And he has like a lot of thoughts around how you should do things, how you should run a project. I think what’s important to note is like probably until now-ish after, I think he said he’d been doing it like five years now.
I think probably until now-ish, he’s like, like a hundred K is still a decent chunk of change, but it’s not like you’re not super rich. So
Chuck Carpenter: No. No. Even a million isn’t super rich
Robbie Wagner: sure, it depends on the time period you acquire it in. And don’t know the specifics on, on all of that. ‘cause it wasn’t like I. This year I made a million. It was like I made a million and it wasn’t clear on over what time period it accumulated.
So we’ll ask anyway. He was like, you know, the important things are just make a good project, right? And like have nice docs, like make it feel nice for developers. And then you can kind of layer [00:33:00] on some things. Like you don’t want it to be like a recipe site where it’s like ads, ads, ads, ads,
Chuck Carpenter: Oh gosh, they’re the worst.
Robbie Wagner: yeah. So, because if
Chuck Carpenter: Well those are content creators. Just clicking audio install for WordPress and
Robbie Wagner: but if you encountered that on like the next JS docs, you would just never use Next Js. so you have to be mindful of like your audience and, and what they’re, you know, wanting to do. So like, making that nice and then having like a couple subtle links like join our, uh, email list or like, you know, we have this new product launch coming, like, click here for more info.
Not like random ads, just like. Nudging you towards other revenue streams and like the email list is super important. He said, so like, you know, you gotta continue to build up your following, which we should probably build a few email lists for the various do.
Chuck Carpenter: I was gonna say, we have dropped the ball there,
Robbie Wagner: Yeah. Yeah. I think everything is just hard to start, but if we started it would probably be fine. [00:34:00] Which is also another one of his things is like, you know, this has been my problem a little bit. I’ve also been like really busy, but I care about the amount, like the, the quality level of everything. So like
Chuck Carpenter: do
Robbie Wagner: nice stuff for this. We’ve got nice stuff for the podcast. We’ve got some people that edit it for us. Now we’ll see if we continue to have them or not. But you know, I that, that bar of
Chuck Carpenter: if you’d like to help us with that, please visit Whiskey Fund to buy some cool t-shirts and other things that help us keep this podcast going.
Robbie Wagner: Yeah. Honestly, there’s not a lot of, there’s not a lot of profit margin on the shirts. Do the memberships instead and then buy a shirt. ‘cause the memberships give you access to discord. Then, uh, you get discounts on merch, like
Chuck Carpenter: also access to your couch. If you happen to be in the DMV area, let Robbie know and you can crash on couch. be a member. I.
Robbie Wagner: Yeah. Anyway, what I was saying before that like just not [00:35:00] caring about how perfect, it’s like make a video, talk about your product, put it out there. You’re the one that knows the most about your product, whether you’re doing a great job of being a super professional. You know, voiceover quality instructor or like just talking about it as a real person and putting it out there doesn’t as much as getting content out there.
So like you’re your worst critic. Just like make stuff, put it out, which I think is great advice.
Chuck Carpenter: And I think from a content creation standpoint, the more you flex that muscle, the more you do it. And please just take these words and not my actions, the better it’ll be. Right. just inevitably going to be challenging before you start doing it, and you’re just not going to be an expert until you.
Get your own voice. So yeah, I mean I think that that’s been a big thing that I started to, to feel more strongly about is like, don’t worry about perfection, just start shipping. And that on with the levels conversation, where it again is like at the end of the day, he’s shipping [00:36:00] things that people value and he makes money from that.
And rinse, repeat,
Robbie Wagner: Yeah, and you can always iterate if you put a product out and you didn’t take the time to write any tests ‘cause you were just shipping to production, doing it quick and it starts to blow up and you’re like, oh damn, I hope this like doesn’t break. Maybe take some time to write some tests, refactor some of that shitty code.
Like there’s nothing saying, like when you do a thing, it has to be that version. Even you record a video, you could be like, oh, I didn’t love the audio on that one. Everyone loves this video though. Let me just redo it with a better audio track. Or like, whatever. Like there’s, there’s nothing saying that everything you put out has to be your final product forever.
Chuck Carpenter: Yeah, like make a bunch of small bets. That’s actually a very interesting builder community that I came across recently. Small bets.com. They’re not sponsoring us, but, and it’s this philosophy. That you don’t have to put all your eggs in one basket necessarily. Like try out a lot of ideas, push things out, see what [00:37:00] catches fire and, and even if they don’t catch fire, like see what just works.
And what if you had like four things that were working generally well? That’s a way to sustain as well. It doesn’t have to be the end all, be all. Oh man, I got a bunch of VC funding, or I got acquired, or I got whatever it might be like. This brings a thousand dollars a month and this is actually like a nice supplement and it’s passive and you know, you just, you never know.
Robbie Wagner: Yeah. I think that is another big key, like, you know, everyone is looking for the next big idea. And you and I don’t have the next big idea, or we lots of money by now. So yeah, I do think there’s something to that. Just shipping smaller products that are like lower maintenance, even if it’s less, if it’s like $300 a month, but you do that 15 times, you start to be making a lot of money, right?
Like so. Yeah, I think if you have a small idea and you’re like, oh, this is small, or Oh, there’s a competitor, this guy already did it and his [00:38:00] site looks cool, like, I’m not gonna waste my time. Don’t think like that. Just like, just build it anyway. Try to hype it up. Maybe people like you better than the person who built the other one, then it takes off.
Or like they like some small part of your product better, like you never know and it existing already doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try it.
Chuck Carpenter: Yeah, no, for sure. Great points there. I want to talk a little what not though.
Robbie Wagner: Let’s do it.
Chuck Carpenter: Let’s transition to that. First of all, just a couple of days ago, and by the time this comes out, it’ll be well known information if you are a Star Wars fan, which I am, and that for me means I try to take in all the content that I can, especially like the shows and movies and whatever else.
I guess I haven’t really read any of the books or the like non cannon things. Not that I’m opposed, it’s just a time issue. Anyway, watching the shows on Disney Plus as they come out, very much enjoying that. Watch the first season of the Acolyte, and it was like, yeah, yeah, I like this. I want to know where this story is going.
It’s great. Like, you know, [00:39:00] the rise of the sth, I guess, or wherever this is going necessarily. I am not a hundred percent sure. Apparently I’ll never know now because they canceled the show. Like the way it ended was a little like, clear. Yeah, no spoilers, but clearly. There’s more coming. This is gonna be cool.
This is like, I’m, I’m really excited for the second season, but I guess, I mean there is some social blowback and all of that aside, like I don’t really care. But apparently this is also like the lowest rated Star Wars Disney show since they started all
Robbie Wagner: I’ve only watched the first episode, but I thought it was decent.
Chuck Carpenter: And it gets even better.
I do think you should watch it anyway, just because
Robbie Wagner: Oh, I
Chuck Carpenter: characters introduced there. Like there are some throughout like Star Wars lore. There’s obviously just some really cool. STH characters in particular that have been introduced. I always thought like Darth Mall was super awesome, so, but he was, you know, barely in that, that one movie and got murdered and I [00:40:00] ended up reading comics to like get more of his backstory and like his planet and all that kind of stuff.
So anyway, there’s another cool one
Robbie Wagner: Yeah, I think that’s, I guess hot take is maybe not the right word for it, but like I really enjoy when I find a show on whatever, like usually Netflix. ‘cause Netflix just has like. Insane amounts of content, but you open it up and it’s like limited series. I’m like, fuck. Yeah. Because now I know you planned it out to end and not end on a cliffhanger and you’re not gonna be like, oh yeah, we’re gonna have a season two.
Here’s this like not wrapped up ending and oh, it’s canceled. Like.
Chuck Carpenter: that’s, that’s true. I, I kind of hate some of those stories where you like get invested. I remember HBO had this show Carnival like years ago. That I thought it was like kind of supernatural and it was like during like the Great Depression and so it was all these like interesting social elements to it.
And it was like this traveling carnival and like, it was really [00:41:00] cool and I think it went two or three seasons. I’m super invested. And then they were like, and we’re done. And I, I have no idea where this goes now. High production, I guess. Not enough people were me watching it and then it went away.
You know, you never get it tidied up and that’s just something I.
Robbie Wagner: Yeah. Yeah. I, I feel like there’s been a lot of shows that have done that to me. The one that I remember from, within the last two or three years, I don’t remember when I watched it exactly. I watched Resident Evil, which they like always make new shows and movies about, but like, I. There was a Netflix show and it was one season, it was super good and then ended on an insane cliffhanger and then canceled.
And I was like, oh my God.
Chuck Carpenter: Yeah,
Robbie Wagner: gonna do that, I think you should be required to like have a clause that’s like, if not renewed, we will make like two or three more episodes that will wrap up the story for you,
Chuck Carpenter: Do you want that though? Because so many people complained about the last season of Game of Thrones, [00:42:00] which a lot of people thought was rushed
Robbie Wagner: it was, they shouldn’t have done that until the books and everything were done.
Chuck Carpenter: but it’s still not out like these people are like.
Robbie Wagner: if there’s ending and, he dies and before he finishes all the books, then fine. Like that ending was terrible.
Chuck Carpenter: So House of the Dragons,
Robbie Wagner: House of the Dragon is. Pretty good. I am like halfway through the second season. I know you said you felt like nothing happened. I can, it kind of feels like this season is like a in-between buildup season and like, I’m guessing not a lot will happen by the end. I haven’t watched it all yet, but.
Chuck Carpenter: Yeah, I would say like, don’t get your hopes up about. Any tidying or setup necessarily in the last episode? I think it’s worth watching the whole season. I mean, just because like the effects, like the dragons are just awesome and like all of that, like [00:43:00] CGI is like super cool and still very satisfying to me.
Yeah, I’m just annoyed because you know, it takes them forever to make a season. So it’s probably like two years before we’re gonna get to boot up again and I just didn’t, I didn’t even get a cliffhanger. You know, like anything like no weird death, no, like blow you back and no cliffhanger. It’s just like, sun’s going down now.
See you tomorrow. tomorrow’s years from now, it just felt like that. So I’m super annoyed.
Robbie Wagner: Yeah. I mean, every show I feel like takes so long now that it’s so hard to like keep the momentum going and especially with shows with like kids, like Stranger Things and stuff, like those guys are gonna be like 30 before they put out the last season. Like what are we even doing?
Chuck Carpenter: yeah. How, how are you gonna deal with that? Like, I didn’t even know there were more seasons ‘cause they’re already get like kind of aged out.
Robbie Wagner: I mean, I, I think they’re all like thoroughly, like probably twenties by now. And
Chuck Carpenter: [00:44:00] for sure.
Robbie Wagner: yeah, they’re come back with the last season sometime in the next couple years, I guess. And they’ll be playing like, I guess they’re supposed to be in high school, which maybe some of them passed for that still, but,
Chuck Carpenter: right 11. Married John Bon Jovi’s son. So that’s
Robbie Wagner: oh, did you? I
Chuck Carpenter: Anyway, little, little pop culture Yeah, so she’s technically, I forget her name now. Anyway, 11 Bon Jovi. Uh, tangents. Oh, I know what I was gonna bring up because we haven’t really talked about games in a while because like, I felt like I’ve had room to breathe for games unless, like, I’m playing an old version of FIFA for like 30 minutes, once a month or something, and soccer is gearing back up, but I won’t.
Who were you with that this time? I’ve picked up in the last couple of weeks since I got back from Italy, ‘cause I didn’t have it with me. Tears of the Kingdom. I feel like I’ve been playing this since we started this podcast, but I could be wrong. It’s just been a long time. On and[00:45:00]
Robbie Wagner: It wasn’t that when we started the podcast. We probably were talking about Breath of the Wild when we started the podcast.
Chuck Carpenter: and then like, I’m gonna get this next one, they finally said, so I’m finally in a mode where I’ve decided, like I’m not just wandering around, like trying to discover, uh, I don’t know, you know, whatever things it would be. I pick like a random thing, like how much of the deep can I un unveil and how many heart containers can I get?
And you know, random different things like that. Like I finally stopped. Like going through all of that. And now I’m like, okay, I’m gearing my character up to like beat it to just get through Gannon and then whatever from there, because you can’t see what percentage of the game you have done until you’ve finished the storyline.
So that’s one thing. And also I just think like, I’m tired of wandering. I’m just gonna give myself a goal. And uh, so I’m at the point where I’m trying to get the. I have the fierce the armor, and I want to like level it up all the way, which in its own way was funny because you [00:46:00] have to like get on every dragon and you have to harvest each of their parts.
I don’t even know if you know that you can do these things, but
Robbie Wagner: No, I’m like five hours into tears of the kingdom, so.
Chuck Carpenter: Oh man. Yeah, so there’s like dragons all over the place and there’s like one for each element. And then there’s a light dragon that’s like a whole like story part. And for this fierce deity armor, which was also in breath of the wild, in order to like upgrade that armor, you need like some dragon parts and some other parts.
And so now I’ve been working on, I got all the dragon parts I need, which essentially you can like ride the dragon through their whole route. You have to wait 10 literal minutes before like you can get the next part. You get a part, and then you have to wait 10 minutes and then you can harvest another part and then you have to wait 10 minutes and it was like, oh my gosh, this
Robbie Wagner: you’re not supposed to like sit and wait. You’re supposed to get one and come back another time is what they intended, but you can wait for 10 minutes.
Chuck Carpenter: Yeah. [00:47:00] Yeah. The re spawning, which basically they just like start glowing again. And then that tells you, okay, now you can get a fang. Now you can. Yeah. I don’t know, but it, it is time consuming. A very specific on that. But I, again, I, I, I’ve refocused myself ‘cause I just found, like before I was just like wandering around and picking these kind of arbitrary things like, okay, I want to get this armor set, or now I want to beat this, uh, I can’t remember what half the things are called, but there’s these like three-headed dragon things.
And okay, now I can finally glia I think it is or something and I can finally beat those. Cool. Now I just like, I’m gonna finish the storyline. Just move on with my life.
Robbie Wagner: Yeah, I do usually don’t care about the storyline, but I do wanna play it more soon because I keep thinking about it. Like over the past few weeks I’ve been like, I should start this back up ‘cause I’m kind of running outta like shows that I care that much about like, I’m gonna finish House of the Dragon and then cancel HBO.
‘cause trying to save a little money. Then, yeah, I’m just like, [00:48:00] I’ve worked my way through like everything I could possibly wanna watch on Netflix. Oh, I haven’t watched Ripley yet. That’s the like one left.
Chuck Carpenter: Ooh. I like it. Highly recommend. I wanted to watch that before we went to Italy, just because even though it’s from the sixties, it’s, it’s very cool.
Robbie Wagner: Yeah. So I don’t know. I just feel like I would enjoy more instead of like just spending an hour or two watching shows like. Building towards completing a game that I probably should have been playing a lot more than I have. Sounds like more rewarding than just being mindless, I guess.
Chuck Carpenter: Yeah. I mean, I don’t know. I mean, you know, you’re balancing the, the arts. How about that? You know, film is an art and all of that, need to, you need to give a little attention to the other arts. I.
Robbie Wagner: Yeah, that’s true. Side note about, uh, what we talked about last episode. I think last one was with Taylor, right? We haven’t done one since then.
Chuck Carpenter: Yeah.
Robbie Wagner: I’ve been taking creatine for the past like couple weeks I guess, and [00:49:00] pretty much still vaporware. Like don’t notice any improvement. Now maybe there is like, my guess is there’s like, it helps if you’re working out a ton, like you’re a bodybuilder and you can feel the difference between taking it or not.
When I work out like a few times and then drop off the working out for like two months, it. Negligible benefits.
Chuck Carpenter: Yeah. I can’t see where that would necessarily benefit, although I’ve, I’ve read some things once or twice about like some people thinking that it improves, like brain power thought.
Robbie Wagner: Yeah, I’ve seen that. So I’m gonna keep taking it and see if I feel like I’m like thinking better or getting more work done, or I don’t know what the like measurements are, but
Chuck Carpenter: Yeah. That’s the key is how do you measure the before and after? Well, I mean, you bought it, you might as well use it, but in general meh.
Robbie Wagner: Yeah. We’ll see. I don’t think we really have anything else to cover here. So
Chuck Carpenter: No folks. We’re about of time. Is there anything you wanna plug, [00:50:00] Robbie, or uh, where can the people find you?
Robbie Wagner: you can find me at uh, yeah, you can find me on Twitter. Robbie the Wagner, Robbie The Wagner everywhere. Um,
Chuck Carpenter: Whiskey fm and then many links there. That’s the best place I think.
Robbie Wagner: Uh, I did switch whiskey FM over to the Star Pod version so people can contact us
Chuck Carpenter: I actually stumbled across that yesterday because I went to do a site search just to pick some future whiskeys for guests, and I was like, when’s the last time we did an old forester? Turns out like two years. So pretty good.
Robbie Wagner: Yeah, like especially if you only have a keyboard that will type Russian characters, please reach out. I’d love a giant thing of Russian characters or a lot of like porn spam or any of that would be great from the contact form. Please drop by, drop all of that in. Uh.
Chuck Carpenter: I, I, I, I’m not even sure if you’re kidding, though. I feel like you’ve got, do you got a honey pot in there [00:51:00] you’re looking to test or
Robbie Wagner: Uh, well, I probably shouldn’t say this publicly, but there is absolutely nothing limiting the contact form right now. Maybe limit it before this episode goes live because it will be, someone will just write a script to just ping it nonstop and that’ll just be annoying.
Chuck Carpenter: See, I was thinking like, oh, is there like an Algolia like search or something I’d like to add to it to make what I did yesterday easier? I.
Robbie Wagner: Well, we are gonna be adding search, so Star Pod will have search and we still need to have someone on to talk about Astro db ‘cause it’s like all of these more complicated things are gonna be powered by Astro. Or Astro DB specifically, because we’ll be able to put all the entities, like an episode as a thing.
It’ll have its transcript, it’ll have its guests, it’ll have, I guess add a field for the whiskey. I didn’t even think about putting that on an episode, but
Chuck Carpenter: That’s what I want to do and I wanna like, yeah, we need to do that. That would help a bunch content wise. Yeah, there’s a few things. Okay, so here’s a call out. We need, we need another Astro team member. [00:52:00] I don’t know. Fuck that. Until I get a NASA jacket, Fred. Just saying. All right. Fair enough. TBD folks.
Robbie Wagner: I don’t know. My brain’s fried. So I think we’re done here and we’ll catch you guys next time.
Outro: You’ve been watching Whiskey Web and Whatnot. Recorded in front of a live studio audience. What the fuck are you talking about, Chuck? Enjoyed the show? Subscribe. You know, people don’t pay attention to these, right? Head to whiskey.fund for merchant to join our Discord server. I’m serious, it’s like 2% of people who actually click these links. And don’t forget to leave us a five star review and tell your friends about the show. All right, dude, I’m outta here. Still got it.